Stephen Strange (Earth-11584)
History "Dormammu! My name is Dr. Stephen Strange. I am the Sorcerer Supreme of Earth. I've come to bargain." Dr. Stephen Strange is a former neurosurgeon and the current holder of the title of Sorcerer Supreme of Earth. This is despite the fact that he has only been a practitioner of the mystic arts for a few short years in our time. Born in 1979 to famed cardiologist Eugene Strange and his wife, Beverly, Stephen was orphaned at a young age due to an accident that also claimed the life of his sister, Donna. This gave Stephen an almost cold attitude towards life, as it could easily be snuffed out in an instance, and he desired to master control over death as much as possible. Using his prodigious memory and skilled mind, Strange sailed through high school, graduating at the age of 15, and eventually earning both an MD and PHD at the same time from Columbia University. In time, he would become one of the foremost neurosurgeons in the entire world. During this time Stephen would begin a romantic relationship with another doctor at the hospital he worked at, Dr. Christine Palmer. Their relationship was a heated one that only lasted a brief while, as Stephen's ego was far too great to be in a relationship with at the time. While the two remained friends (and still cared for one another, even if Strange couldn't express as such), a tension did grow between them shortly after they broke up. Strange threw himself even further into his work, developing a rivalry with another surgeon at Metro General Hospital named Nicodemus West and showing him up at every opportunity he got. Strange began a private practice as well, choosing only high profile cases to work on and refusing those cases which he deemed as a lost cause, such as that of a quadriplegic named Jonathan Pangborn. As a result, he became a millionaire. In 2012, after several years as a top flight surgeon, Strange was set to give a keynote address at a high profile conference. En route to the hotel where the conference was taking place, Strange received a call from Dr. West to consult on a case that had come in. Distracted while driving at high speeds on a winding road, Strange's car drifted into the opposing lane and was struck head on, causing it to crash into the ravine below. The accident shattered several of the bones in Stephen's hands and caused a large amount of damage elsewhere. He was flown back to Metro General where Dr. West did what he could to fix the damage, but the nerve endings in Strange's hands were beyond repair, causing him to lose most fine motor control in them. Upon learning this, Stephen blamed Dr. West for his failure and began seeking out new forms of treatment for his condition, no matter the cost. Strange sought out every treatment he could think of, spending his vast fortune to no avail. As he descended further into self-pity and bankruptcy, he even drove away Christine, the one person who truly cared for him. As a last ditch effort, he sought out the case of Jonathan Pangborn, the quadriplegic he had once refused to treat, when he discovered that Pangborn had somehow made a miraculous recovery. Pangborn, out of pity, told him of a land called Kamer-Taj in Nepal and to seek a healer named The Ancient One. Using the last of his money, Strange sought out the Ancient One on the streets of Kathmandu. He seeks the entrance to Kamer-Taj, but finds nobody who seems to know of it (though in reality he is followed by a man in a green hood.) On one back alleyway he sees a woman being accosted by some thugs. Not thinking of his own safety, Strange intervenes to save the woman, only to get a beating himself. He is nearly killed until the hooded man, named Mordo, saves him, explaining that this was a test of character and then leading him to Kamer-Taj. In Kamer-Taj, Strange meets with the Ancient One, and is immediately dismissive of the ideas of "crackpot ideas like magic." The Ancient One however forcefully ejects his astral form from his body, sending him through several different dimensions as a small taste of the power at her disposal. Beyond intrigued, Strange asks to be taught, but the Ancient One rejects him for his arrogance. Undaunted, Strange remains on the doorstep to the monastary for well over three hours before the Ancient One finally relents and lets him in. Over the next several months Strange learns all about the Mystic Arts, using his eidetic memory and a natural skill in sorcery to grow rapidly to the point where he becomes one of the best students in Kamer-Taj. However, he gets no closer to healing his hands, much to his frustration, and he also struggles with a way to apologize to Christine. He eventually learns of the rogue sorcerer Xandu, a former pupil of the Ancient One who is seeking the pieces of an artifact known as the Wand of Watoomb to amplify his own powers and help a Dread Lord named Dormammu come from the Dark Dimension to consume the Earth. Some time later Strange was studying in the library of Kamer-Taj, when he opened the Book of Cagliostro, a tome concerning the manipulation of time which had pages stolen from it by Xandu before his arrival. In its pages he sees a picture of an amulet known as the Eye of Agamotto, which also happens to be sitting on a pedastal in the next room. With Wong not present, Strange takes the eye and begins to experiment with it, using it to manipulate the flow of time around an apple he had been eating and then using it to restore the pages in the Book of Cagliostro. It was then though that his experiments were interrupted by Mordo and Wong, chastizing him for violating the natural law. Before they could go further into detail, an alarm sounded and Strange was tasked with helping defend the New York Sanctum from Xandu and his zealots, their to steal the third piece of the Wand of Watoomb. Despite having little formal combat training, Strange managed to hold his own against two of the zealots after Mordo had been knocked unconscious, stranding them in a desert. Fighting against Xandu though was another matter, as he found himself nearly killed until he found a relic known as the Cloak of Levitation, which helped him trap Xandu in a trapping chair. With Xandu captured briefly, Strange learned more about Dormammu and the Dark Dimension, how it was a place beyond time, and also learned for the Ancient One's stealing of power from it to stay alive. This was all a ploy, though, so another zealot could stab him through the chest. Buying time with the Cloak, Strange managed to form a portal to Metro General Hospital and contact Dr. Palmer, aiding her in trying to fix the bleeding around his heart. However the Astral Form of the Zealot followed him through the portal and the two began fighting on the Astral Plain, with Strange eventually killing the zealot with help from Christine and a defibrillator. After apologizing to Christine and admitting his feelings for her, Strange confronted the Ancient One and Mordo back at the New York Sanctum, where Xandu had managed to escape with the third piece of the wand. Strange confesses to the Ancient One that Xandu told him the secret of her immortality, which she doesn't directly deny (though Mordo believes it to be a trick on Xandu's part). The Ancient One leaves to reinforce the Hong Kong Sanctum, where the final piece of the Wand is located, while Strange and Mordo have an argument. Their argument is interrupted by Xandu's return to try and kill them. When Mordo is nearly killed, Strange sends them all to the Mirror Dimension in an attempt to contain Xandu's power. However Xandu and his zealot's powers are increased inside the Mirror Dimension, resulting in a fight between the groups that goes badly for Strange. The Ancient One enters the Dimension to try and help, revealing that Xandu was telling the truth about her in the process. During the fight, The Ancient One is stabbed and Strange tries and fails to save her from falling through a portal to the real world. He brings her body back to Christine at the hospital, agreeing to talk Dr. West through the surgical procedure to try and save her life. However, Strange sends his astral form after that of the Ancient One when she leaves her body, learning the secret of how Jonathan Pangborn healed himself and witnessing her death. Knowing what he needs to do to stop Xandu, Strange departs from Christine again and returns to Kamer-Taj. There he finds a disenchanted Mordo, who is struggling to come to grips with the Ancient One's seeming duplicity. Strange manages to convince Mordo to help him defend Hong Kong, but when they arrive they find Wong dead and Xandu having already used the Wand to open a portal to the Dark Dimension. Mordo comments that they are out of time, but this inspires Strange to use the Eye of Agamotto to reverse time, restoring Wong to life and stopping the invasion of Dormammu. Strange and his group fight with Xandu briefly, before Strange flies into the Dark Dimension himself to confront the Dread Lord. He uses the Eye to cast a time loop spell and then confronts Dormammu, calling himself the new Sorcerer Supreme of the Earth and demanding to bargain. Dormammu easily dispatches Strange, but this causes the time loop to reset, trapping the two in an endless cycle seemingly forever. Dormammu continues to kill Strange time and again, but the time loop always resets. Eventually, Dormammu surrenders and bargains with Strange, taking Xandu and his zealots from the Earth and ending his assault upon it forever in exchange for Strange breaking the loop and never using the Eye in his dimension again. The threat defeated, Strange thinks all is well, but Mordo leaves the Masters of the Mystic Arts, taking the Wand of Watoomb with him. Strange returns the Eye of Agamotto to Kamer-Taj (which Wong refers to as an Infinity Stone) and assumes the mantle of Sorcerer Supreme of Earth. In the intervening years, however, Strange mastered the powers of the Time Stone and used it to peer into the future of the Earth, much as he had been told of by The Ancient One in their final conversation together. In these alternate futures he saw a great disaster in the Earth's future, and a delicate pathway to try and avert that disaster. Doing so, based on what he assumed he saw, involved coming up with a solution to the problem of the Hulk. To that end, Strange contacted Tony Stark, Reed Richards, the Inhuman Black Bolt, Nick Fury and Thaddeus Ross to come up with a solution. Eventually they decided as a last resort to create a spacecraft that would send the Hulk to an unpopulated world in the cosmos where he could live out his days in peace. Eventually, this protocol was carried out, though even Strange wasn't completely certain of the future that would bring. As it turned out the future was not what Strange had exactly intended. After briefly helping Thor Odinson locate his father on Earth to try and avert Ragnarok, Strange saw the arrival of a ship containing the Hulk and his Warbound Clan. After contacting Tony Stark and coming up with a plan of attack when the Hulk demanded their surrender or he would lay waste to Earth, Strange and Wong searched through the library in the Sanctum Sanctorum to try and find a way to deal with the Hulk (Wong suggested binding him to the spirit Zarathos, though Strange said this was a very bad idea). The two however were attacked by troops from the Warbound led by Hulk's lieutenant, Miek. Strange joined in the final assault on the Hulk's ship, leaving the Time Stone in Wong's care for the duration. Though fighting valiantly, Strange was defeated by the Hulk and the Warbound and would have been made to fight to the death were it not for Bruce Banner's intervention against his alter-ego. After Tony defeated the Hulk finally with a gamma suppressor weapon, Strange returned to the Sanctum Sanctorum, unsure of the course of events that he had helped set in motion. Powers & Abilities * Sorcerer Supreme: Through his eidetic memory and much reading, Doctor Strange is a master of the mystic arts and can use magic to achieve almost any effects. Common spells used by him are shield spells, Eldritch Constructs of Weapons, Astral Projection, and Dimensional Shifting/Hopping via his Sling Ring. * Cloak of Levitation: Strange also possesses the Cloak of Levitation, a semi-sentient artifact that grants him the ability of flight and can attack his enemies. * Time Stone: Doctor Strange wears the Time Stone inside the Eye of Agamotto, and can use its power to create closed time loops, reverse temporal effects, view alternate futures and even restore destroyed objects. * Skilled Surgeon: Prior to his car accident, Stephen Strange was arguably the greatest neurosurgeon in the world. Though he is incapable of performing surgery anymore, his knowledge of the brain and neural systems is possibly unsurpassed in the MCU. Weaknesses Due to a car accident suffered in 2012, Strange sustained severe nerve damage in his hands, making simple tasks that require precise movements difficult at best (and other tasks, like surgery, completely impossible.) Through training he has managed to mitigate this handicap, though it is still present (despite his ability for otherwise, as reported by The Ancient One.) Strange's primary weakness is his unbridled arrogance, which caused the car accident in the first place (driving on a winding road while using his cellphone), drove away his loved ones and continues to influence his actions to this day. Although he has tried to limit its impact, it still shows through on occasion. Film Details Doctor Strange appears in the following films within the Earth-11584 continuity. In all cases he is portrayed by actor Benedict Cumberbatch. * Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) only * The Incredible Hulk 2 (2015) * Doctor Strange (2016) * World War Hulk (2017) Category:Earth-11584 Category:Earth-11584 Characters Category:Good Characters